Abstract

This talk is part of the 11th series of webinars for Professional Development in the Arts.

Composing collaboratively in small groups has become an established activity in the national curricula of many countries. In this presentation, views of musical creativity will be first considered in relation to collaborative composition, and its implications as a pupil-centred learning procedure. Then, a sample of reports documenting research on collaborative composition carried out by music educators in educational contexts where they acted as teachers to the pupils or as facilitators will be reviewed. Finally, the creative projects and the research questions and designs of these projects will be analysed and compared, and methodological issues in relation to the value of the knowledge accumulated with the action-research approach will be discussed.

Dr Gabriel Rusinek is Associate Professor of Music Education at the Faculty of Education, Complutense University of Madrid, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses. He has published in Spanish and international journals, and co-edits the peer-reviewed open access research journal Revista Electrónica Complutense de Investigación en Educación Musical (http://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/RECI/). He is a member of the editorial boards of ISME ’s International Journal of Music Education-Practice and Revista Internacional de Educación Musical, and a member of the advisory boards of the International Journal of Education & the Arts and of Music Education Research. Since 2010 he serves as commissioner at the ISME Music in Schools and Teacher Education Commission.